Help with first project, please

[MattP]

I came to woodworking via woodcarving. I'm basically a decent beginner at that.

I've never built anything that required any joinery, but have been amassing hand tools for some years with an eye toward learning.

I'm working on my first project that I have planned to help me learn. It is a simple light duty shelf case for my garage that I'm going to mount on casters so I can roll it around as necessary.

It's going to be about 6' high, 4' wide and 2' deep. The frame is 2" x 2" pine I got at the BORG. My question concerns the corner joints, where the vertical post, horizontal support and cross member that connects the front and back all come together. After much thought, I decided that I would make this joint a half lap of the vertical post and the front horizontal member, with the front of the vertical post left intact, with a tenon on the cross member passing through the half lap, essentially pinning the horizontal 2 x 2 between the cross member and the vertical post. (I hope that's clear, I don't have a sketch I can upload).

So here's my problem: I think that cutting the half lap, then cutting the mortises in the half lapped pieces is an easy way for a newbie to introduce error into the joint--that the mortises won't line up perfectly to accept the tenon (this is, after all, the first M&T joint I'm going to have ever cut).

So I'm thinking about gluing up the half laps that create the front and back frames and then cutting the M&Ts through the assembled half laps, and then gluing the front frame to the back frame with the tenoned cross members. My concern is that the chopping for the mortising might break the half lap joints apart.

If gluing the half laps and then cutting the mortise is a bad idea, can someone walk me through the best way of marking the mortises on the half lapped pieces so they line up to accept the tenon?

Thanks.

Note to the enjuneer:

After a long vacation, that Shaw's patent Sargent jointer you repaired and restored for me is back in service:



It was an absolute joy to use whipping into shape the best of the twisted and bowed junk the BORG had for sale.

[Rob Young]

If you can manage the chaos of moving around a glued-up piece to continue cutting joinery, yes, that would pretty much guarantee alignment.

[MattP]

Rob Young said:

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If you can manage the chaos of moving around a glued-up piece to continue cutting joinery, yes, that would pretty much guarantee alignment.

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Yeah, I'm not happy about that prospect, either. But with my skill level--none, lol--it seems like the better option if there's minimal risk of breaking the joint by chopping the mortise.

I've cut the first half lap--it came out pretty well right off the saw, and cleaned up nicely with just a bit of chisel paring. I suspect that my idea of pretty good is what a lot of you would consider firewood. But I have seven more just on the corners to improve on, so I'm hopeful.

Thanks for the reply.

[enjuneer]

MattP said:

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Note to the enjuneer:

After a long vacation, that Shaw's patent Sargent jointer you repaired and restored for me is back in service:



It was an absolute joy to use whipping into shape the best of the twisted and bowed junk the BORG had for sale.

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She's looking pretty good! Glad you're finally able to make use of that great plane.

[MattP]

enjuneer said:

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[blockquote]MattP said:

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Note to the enjuneer:

After a long vacation, that Shaw's patent Sargent jointer you repaired and restored for me is back in service:


It was an absolute joy to use whipping into shape the best of the twisted and bowed junk the BORG had for sale.

---

She's looking pretty good! Glad you're finally able to make use of that great plane.

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[/blockquote]

Yeah, it was a long time coming. Real life sort of got in the way, and I haven't really done a thing woodworking-wise in over a year, I think.

Here's the results of cleaning up the BORG pine:



That was fun. Sadly, I learned a hard lesson after creating that pile of shavings: the neighborhood cats consider a pile of pine shavings a perfectly adequate substitute for a litter box of Feline Pine.